1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a backlight assembly for providing light in a display device, and more particularly to a backlight assembly generating light in multiple directions in a display device displaying images on multiple display units.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various types of display devices have been developed for electronic goods employing an image display part as its primary or secondary function. One of the popular image display devices is a liquid crystal display (LCD) device which utilizes the light characteristics of liquid crystal. Molecular arrangement of liquid crystal varies in response to an electric filed applied thereto, so that light transmittance of the liquid crystal is changed. An LCD device displays images using such light transmit characteristics of the liquid crystal.
Generally, the electronic goods, such as cellular phones, portable computers, desktop computers, etc., employ an image display device (e.g., LCD device) that displays images on a single display unit disposed in one direction. As there has been a trend of employing multiple display units displaying images in different directions, display devices have been developed to display images in multiple directions, mostly two directions. Also, a backlight assembly for providing light in a display device has been developed to be used for the multi-direction display devices.
For example, in a conventional two-way display device, images are displayed on one display unit and other images are displayed on another display unit. The two display units are disposed in two different directions (e.g., opposite directions). In other words, a display device has a first display unit for displaying first images and a second display unit for displaying second images, and the first and second display units are disposed in first and second directions, respectively, which are different from each other.
Such two-way display devices have a two-way backlight assembly that provides light in two different directions. In other words, the two-way backlight assembly provides first light in the first direction and second light in the second direction for the first and second display units, respectively. In such a conventional two-way backlight assembly, there are a light source generating light and two light guide plates for guiding light to be provided to the two display units. The light generated from the light source is divided into first and second light by the first and second light guide plates, respectively, and the divided light is provided to the first and second display units, respectively.
However, since the first and second light guide plates of a conventional two-way backlight assembly have a substantially identical thickness, it is unable or difficult to control the amount of light divided from the light generated by the light source. In other words, the first and second light guide plates each receive the same amount of light from the light source so that the light guide pages each output the same amount of light to the corresponding display unit.
Thus, in case that a display device selectively operates the two display units to display images only on a selected display unit or needs more light at one display unit than at the other display unit because of differences between images displayed in the first and second display units, a conventional two-way display device employing the conventional two-way backlight assembly is unable to provide different amounts of light to the two display units.
Therefore, it is desired that a backlight assembly for providing light in a display unit is improved so that the amount of light provided to different display units of the display device is controlled to supply a proper amount of light to the respective display units. It is also desirable to provide a display device that employs such backlight assembly so as to improve the image quality of the respective display units.